Sippy Sidhu murder case: Supreme Court asks CBI to supply statements of witnesses to prime accused Kalyani Singh

Satya Prakash

New Delhi, May 29

The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the CBI to supply statements of witnesses to Kalyani Singh — prime accused in national-level shooter and lawyer Sippy Sidhu’s murder case.

“Let the document be supplied by the CBI within two weeks,” a Vacation Bench of Justice JK Maheshwari and Justice KV Viswanathan said, disposing of an appeal filed by Kalyani Singh challenging an April 2024 order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court refusing supply of certain documents to her.

The order came after advocate Zoheb Hossain submitted on behalf of the CBI that the order under challenge was passed at Section 207 CrPC which deals with supplying copies of statements recorded by the police. He said the documents were not relied upon by the CBI.

Now that charges have been framed, Kalyani could take recourse to Section 91 which empowers a court to issue summons to produce a particular document, Hossain said, adding the CBI would not oppose it.

Senior counsel Siddharth Dave, representing Kalyani, said statements of witnesses recorded under Section 161 of the Criminal Procedure Code were recorded by Chandigarh Police but the CBI didn’t make them part of the charge sheet after the probe got transferred to the central agency.

Asserting that Kalyani had a right to access the said un-relied documents, Dave urged the Bench to direct the CBI to supply the same to the accused.

At Hossain’s request, the Bench, however, clarified that the order was passed on “peculiar facts and circumstances of the case”.

Thirty-five-year-old national-level shooter and advocate Sukhmanpreet Singh Sidhu, aka Sippy Sidhu – the grandson of former Punjab and Haryana High Court judge late Justice SS Sidhu — was shot dead by unknown assailants in September 2015 at a park in Chandigarh.

The Home Secretary of the Chandigarh Administration had in 2016 transferred the probe into the case to the CBI.

The CBI had arrested Kalyani Singh — daughter of a retired Punjab and Haryana High Court judge – Justice Sabina — on June 15, 2022 on the allegation that she murdered Sippy Sidhu in a Sector 27 park on the night of September 20, 2015. Sidhu had allegedly turned down Kalyani’s marriage proposal.

Kalyani was seen talking to Sippy Sidhu and thereafter killing him with an unknown person with firearms on the day of the murder, the CBI alleged. In September 2022, the Punjab and Haryana High Court granted her bail in the case.

A CBI court has already framed murder charges against Kalyani and the trial is expected to commence soon.